I spent 16 years defending Border Patrol agents. What happened in Minneapolis was illegal.

I joined U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shortly after September 11, 2001, out of a simple sense of duty: to help protect this country from those who would do it harm. Over the next sixteen years, I served as Border Patrol sector counsel in El Paso—where the Border Patrol was founded in 1924—San Diego, and El Centro. When I left CBP in 2019, I was an Assistant Chief Counsel.

My job was not to criticize Border Patrol agents. It was to train them, defend them, and, when necessary, prosecute those who harmed them. I trained agents in the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) on lawful use of force before deployments to Super Bowls and other national security events. I worked with U.S. Attorneys to defend agents accused of excessive force. I served as a special federal prosecutor and secured a conviction for an assault on an agent with a deadly weapon. I completed CBP’s advanced leadership training course alongside senior Border Patrol officials, learning lessons drawn from Navy SEAL commanders about discipline, restraint, and accountability.

I am not anti-law-enforcement. I spent most of my adult life standing shoulder to shoulder with Border Patrol agents, helping them accomplish their law enforcement mission, and defending their actions in court. That is precisely why I can say, without hesitation, that what happened last Saturday in Minneapolis—where Border Patrol agents subdued and killed U.S. citizen and VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti—was not only wrong, but unlawful.

The conduct on display was antithetical to everything Border Patrol agents are trained to do and everything the agency claims to stand for. The U.S. Border Patrol motto “Honor First” is not just a slogan. It is a legal and ethical mandate.

Border Patrol agents are among the most highly trained federal officers in the country when it comes to rural interdiction, cartel encounters, and operating alone in remote terrain. They are not trained for urban crowd control, protest policing, or de-escalation with U.S. citizens. Yet the Administration has ordered Border Patrol agents into precisely those environments—often out of uniform, masked, and operating in unfamiliar cities against lawful permanent residents and U.S. citizens with no immigration violations or criminal history.

These agents are being pushed to meet apprehension quotas, told that dissenters are enemies, and sent into volatile situations they were never trained to handle. That combination is dangerous. Minneapolis is the predictable result.

Under clearly established Supreme Court precedent, federal agents may only use force that is objectively reasonable and necessary under the circumstances (Graham v. Connor). Deadly force is justified only where a person poses an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury (Tennessee v. Garner). Agents cannot stop or detain someone without reasonable suspicion of a federal crime or immigration violation (Terry v. Ohio), and Border Patrol agents have no authority to enforce state crimes.

Measured against those standards, nearly every step the agents took against Mr. Pretti violated the law.

First, there was no legal justification for pushing a female protester to the ground.

Second, Mr. Pretti did not commit an assault on a federal officer under 18 U.S.C. § 111 by stepping in to help her.

Third, the use of pepper spray was unlawful because agents skipped required intermediate steps to use lesser force such as verbal commands.

Fourth, there was no justification to tackle Mr. Pretti to the ground.

Fifth, agents failed to control both hands before attempting a pat-down.

Sixth, agents should have used mandatory non-lethal force options such as a baton or taser before resorting to a firearm.

Seventh, an agent discharged a weapon while another agent was physically engaged with Mr. Pretti, creating a serious risk of friendly fire.

Border Patrol agents do not normally operate this way. Ordering them into these roles invites tragedy, exposes them to liability, and betrays the public trust. This misuse of the U.S. Border Patrol must stop now before more innocent people lose their lives.

Chris Duncan is a former senior attorney with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where he served for 16 years advising and defending federal law enforcement officers and training agents on the constitutional limits of the use of force. Duncan now writes and speaks nationally about the dangers of deploying federal agents in ways that violate constitutional norms and put both officers and civilians at risk.